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Basic to leaders gaining followership are two critical leadership components: humility and transparency.

When you think of humility as a leadership attribute, it can connote a lack of toughness and resolve. You many think of a humble leader as a weak leader. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Humble leaders set their ego aside to best serve the good of the team. They are assertive, but not aggressive. They are confident, but not arrogant. They admit their faults and freely acknowledge that they don’t know it all. Consistently, they have the ability to set aside their ego and self-aggrandizement in the best interests for the success of the team, rather than the promotion of themselves.

Humble leaders lead with an unpretentious, outer focus. Over time, they find themselves surrounded by followers who clearly align themselves with the leader and contribute freely for the good of the team. These humble leaders are role models for we and not me or I.

Continue reading “Transparent Leadership” »

Wherever you turn, there are prolific naysayers and doomsday makers telling us how bad things are today. Not only are things dismal now, they are going to get worse in the future. If you took all you hear about how bad things are seriously, you’d get seriously depressed. Don’t go there. There’s no payoff for wallowing in despair. Instead, exercise your choice. Choose a positive approach and look for the humor in your situation.

Make it fun. The people left on the front lines have survived the worst recession in modern times. They are burned out. They are tired of doing more, with less, for the good of the company. They have given their all, are grateful for the job, but enough is enough. Morale is down.

While you don’t have any control over marketplace factors that impact your workplace, you do have control over how you react to them. Look for the humor in even the most difficult circumstances. Fun, humor and laughter make work more enjoyable by reducing stress and improving morale. They not only help the team deal with the frustrations in a positive manner, they help put challenges into perspective. While we can’t control the stressors, we can control how we react to them.

Using humor and laughter in the workplace helps achieve the following positive outcomes:

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From the November 2011 Quest for Leadership Excellence Newsletter (sign up)

Vacation. There, I said it. Many US workers treat this term as a bad word that must be avoided. What most people don’t realize is that long hours at work and mountains of unused vacation time are not synonymous with results. In fact, it is safe to say that the exact opposite is true.

On a recent trip abroad, I met a couple who truly knew the value of vacations. The husband worked a demanding job that came with a high amount of stress and a reputation for causing heart attacks. He managed a team of employees in an organization where working 60 hours a week was the norm and the main priority in life was the next promotion. When his wife was diagnosed with bone cancer in her mid forties, he took time off to care for her, and, once her cancer went into remission, they made it their goal in life to see the world. Ever year they take time off to travel and, so far, have been to over twenty different countries. While he’s gone, he still has to check into work every now and then, but taking time off has put his problems at work into perspective, lowered his work-related stress incredibly and shown his team that there is life outside of work. To get the benefits of vacation, we don’t all have to be world travelers, we just need to take time off to relax, do things we’ve been wanting to do and maybe even take in some different scenery.

As a leader, you most likely see the value in your employees taking vacations, but do you allow yourself the same privilege? If not, why is that? Are you worried that your team will encounter problems while you’re gone? Or, are you really worried that work will go on as usual while you’re away? Sometimes, that is the hardest one to admit. By taking time off, you show your employees that you trust them.

Here are other reasons that show us why vacations are paramount, especially for leaders:

Continue reading “Take Time Off Work – Your Success Depends on It” »